


And Not Soon to Die

by PreludeInZ



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Death, Expiration Date AU, F/M, Grief, Mourning, Romance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2786744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically, what if Expiration Date had been about Miss Pauling, instead of Scout, coming to Spy for advice?</p><p>...and then what if something horrible happened?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. waste of time

“…so…cancer?”

“Tumors. I do not know about cancer.” Spy lit another cigarette, unironically, clouding the room with blue smoke. “Do not ask me, ask Herr Doktor.”

Miss Pauling was staring at him, wide-eyed, clutching her clipboard. “Why…why wouldn’t you tell me? I wasn’t supposed to find out, it was an accident. Oh my god. The…the whole team? A-all of you?”

Spy swirled the cognac in his glass, indifferent. “All men die.”

Well, now she was crying. That was unexpected. “Ah.  _Cher petite_ , do not…” He sighed. “Mourn us when we are gone, Miss Pauling. We have seventy hours yet." Well. Sixty-eight, but he was trying to be kind. "Don’t waste your time.”  _His_ time, more importantly, but. Kindness. 

Bawling. Just unabashedly, fumbling in her pockets for a tissue. Of course she didn’t have one. He rolled his eyes, got up from his chair, and offered a four hundred dollar silk pocket square. She blew her nose into it. Repeatedly.

She attempted to hand it back. “Oh, no no,  _cherie_. You keep it.” Spy was a gentleman. At least he was going to die.

——

Spy spoke seven languages fluently, and could fake his way through most others. Thankfully one of these was hysterical-girl-with-a-silly-crush. Even then, he had to clarify what he was hearing.

“…Scout. You are quite certain. This is not just…the…the natural reaction to the impermanence of youth and the harsh reality of death. You are quite certain you are infatuated with Scout.”

Well, that made her mad. Thankfully he could fake his way through an understanding of infuriated-woman. “I am in  _love_ with Scout, you stupid… _French_ …cheese-eating…ashtray face.” Miss Pauling was usually far more articulate than that. She had mostly cried herself out, sitting on the floor in front of his chair. You couldn’t have paid him to take his pocket square at this point.

“I would just rather you be quite certain. Before you decided to do anything that might be foolish if he were not about to die.”

He was really going to need to try and make her stop crying at the drop of a hat. “Mon  _Dieu_ , child. Assuming for the moment that you  _are_ serious…what would you do? If he were going to die in…” he glanced at his watch. “In sixty-seven and a half hours.”

Miss Pauling sniffled, partially composed. Big, teary green eyes. A whimpering little sigh. The last time he had seen Miss Pauling cry on the job, it was because the wind had shifted while she was trying to burn several trashbags full of human organs. Clearly this was more upsetting. “I don’t know. I never knew, or I would have  _done_ it. Maybe. If I weren’t so scared. J-just…everything I  _should’ve_ done.” Spy’s heartstrings were, reluctantly, tugged. “I-I hate to ask. You’ve got your own problems, b-but…can you help me?”

Ah. Well. That was the question he knew the answer to in any language. There didn’t seem to be much chance of making a noble last stand otherwise. So, why not take his time to help a girl in love? If at the end of his life, it was revealed he had secretly been a shameless romantic, well, at least he would die true to the legacy of his mother country.

“…I’ve never even been on a  _date_  before.”

_Merde_.  _Children_.

“Well. That is a shame. Let us see what we might arrange.”

——

He had insisted on buying her a proper dress. She wore a perfectly serviceable skirt and cardigan, but he went into town with her, and bullied her into something properly pretty. She couldn’t wear this on the job, she protested. She was not meant to do her job, she was meant to do the opposite of her job, he had replied. Her job was emphatically not trying to woo the stupid Scout.

It was too short. This wasn’t how it was meant to fit, who wore things like this? Where was she supposed to put her gun? Spy had lent her a derringer, and said he hoped she preferred a shotgun for convenience, and not because she was a terrible shot. Then he had bought her silk stockings and garters.

She had needed help to get them on. What were they teaching in all girls catholic schools, these days? Where was this foolish child’s mother? Spy made her cry again. Well,  _really_ though.  _Spy_  knew how to put garters on. He knew how to take them off. Of men, or of women, his own socks were held up by garters, because he was a professional with impeccable taste. Women.  _Dieu._

Miss Pauling was young enough to be his daughter, however, and there were certain bounds that gentlemen did not cross.

So a salesgirl was employed. Spy made her cry before she had even managed to help Miss Pauling into her garters. They left the store with a more sensible pair of nylons and Miss Pauling decided that her shotgun probably wouldn’t class with her elegant, lovely new dress. Maybe she could wear it again. There would be a Christmas party sometime.

Then she cried because none of the mercs would be there and there would be no point to any mistletoe without stupid Scout. What was his problem, anyway, always flirting with her and never making a move? That wasn’t fair.

_Idiot children_ was all Spy had thought.

——

“Girl, you have feet of clay.”

She was annoyed now, because Spy insisted on teaching her to waltz. Her feet hurt from being  stepped on, and also from not being in sensible flats. Spy had also needed to teach her how to walk in heels. Lilting strains of the waltz from Swan Lake didn’t make the afternoon any more pleasant. “You mean two left feet, and this is stupid. We’re wasting so much time.”

He snorted. “I mean precisely what I said. I am the dying man, I will say who is wasting time. Again! Come now, you are a terrible dancer.”

“…can Scout even dance?”

Spy scoffed, and spun Miss Pauling through a passable inside turn, then resumed the elegant circling of the cross-step waltz. “I imagine you will have to teach him.”

He smiled, internally, as her eyes lit up at the thought of it. He did have a spot of affection for the dear, sweet-hearted girl with the scooter and the shotgun. Romantics at heart, the both of them.

——

He had cooked her dinner. He was an exquisitely good cook. He made her laugh instead of cry, and she thanked him for his help. He asked, sincerely, what she saw in the boy. She told him, shyly, sincerely.

Spy felt bad for having wasted her time. These things were necessary, though. The poor girl had never been on a date. Someone would need to teach her a minimum acceptable standard. He poured her a glass of clear, sweet wine, and commented on how lovely her hair looked in the candlelight. The way she looked when she took her glasses off. She should be quite sure to do that. Her eyes were more devastating than imminent death.

They talked, long after the candle had burned low, about his many ( _many_ ) lovers, men and women both, and the mistakes Spy had made and learned from. The time  _he_ had wasted. He hoped she was at least learning from what he’d done wrong.

Miss Pauling cried again, because she hadn’t been better friends with all of them. She hadn’t taken the time to learn these kinds of lessons, not from any of them. Not how to build a fire from Pyro, how to skin a squirrel from Sniper. How to change her oil. How to make a pipe bomb. How to field strip a rifle, how to swear in Russian. Morbid anatomy. How to enjoy a baseball game. Spy had expressed a similar regret, with regard to his comrades, but with regard to Miss Pauling, as well. She was a refreshingly sweet creature, a blossom in the desert. He, at least, was glad that they would part as friends. He was proud of her. She wasn’t totally hopeless, anyway.

——

Miss Pauling had botched it  _so badly_ , by being terrible at flirting, tongue-tied and clumsy and red in the face, it was almost a relief when an improbable monster made of wheat, wheat by-products, and metastasized gluten reared its ugly head in the middle of it. If she had been informed that only bread could get these particular tumors, she would not have been relieved, because her only consolation was that Scout was probably not more than hour from being dead forever, and then she wouldn’t need to be horribly embarrassed anymore.

Still. Spy was watching. It was going well, he thought. The two of them. Young, sweet. Romantic and not soon to die, not as soon as they thought, anyway. It was easier, to see what she saw, once she’d told him what exactly it was. He was young and he did have a certain rascally handsomeness, he was earnest and he smiled when he saw her. He wanted her safe, he wanted her happy. If you hit him over the head with the necessity of it, he might even treat her well enough. Spy could allow for that..

Spy had learned a lesson about wasting time. Sixty-eight hours ago, he should have grabbed the pair of them by the hair and banged their heads together until they had ceased to be idiots. Instead he was out a $400 pocket square. Hopefully she would at least keep it. Waste of time.

At least he could be sure she’d had one nice date, as she turned, looked past Scout. Winked and smiled.

He only nodded.


	2. the sadder, but wiser girl

——

It was an insult to her, to have doubted she loved the boy. Spy added that to the list of mistakes he’d made, wrongs he’d done to good women, especially those who loved other men. Better men.

Spy had too long considered Scout a boy, but Miss Pauling had always known him to be a better man. Because when he got sick, really sick, when he was told—not unkindly—by Medic, that this was something that needed the attention of a real doctor, she had quit her job the very same day. And she had always loved her job.

No letter, no two weeks of warning, she just said her goodbyes and walked out, holding his hand when she went. Spy had watched her go, and then later without her knowledge, watched her load up her little truck with the few things a pair of childrencould have amassed, in the span of two lifetimes that weren’t even as long as his was when combined. Watched the two of them holding each other, all love and youth and anxiety, slipping off into the night.

——

But she had sent letters, after leaving. Both of them signed their names. The pair of them had traveled, all over the world, they had the money and she was determined and fiercely devoted. She reached back into the Badlands and made the friendships she had nearly missed out on, sending letters and pictures from Provence, from Minsk, from Adelaide. Glasgow. Berlin.

They were cheerful. They were happy. They were young and they had set out on their grand adventure. Only his smile was a little bit fainter every time. She held him a little closer. His arm seemed to lie a little more heavily across her shoulders. Spy wondered if he was imagining these things. He’d been looking at the lives of others in pictures for years, taken in secret. Pictures taken on purpose seemed like they had more to hide.

More letters. More of the pictures were taken inside hotel rooms, or out of windows, instead of Italian beaches or windswept Scottish moors. Spy wondered if the rest of the team even noticed. There was a picture that Spy realized only he had been sent, one Scout probably hadn’t realized she’d taken.

The light in it was all washed out, and he was only halfway sitting up, reclining against what looked like every pillow in the room. Miss Pauling, thoughtful to excess. It had the familiar look of a bed in some entirely-too-expensive hotel room, white-linened and plush. He was looking away from her. He wore long sleeves, something too big for him. There were extra blankets. Books and papers, scattered over the blankets. Rain out the window. London, Spy realized, by the silhouette of the buildings outside the window. Darkly stained tissues on the floor, just out of sight.

A few tears had been shed, on the letter that went with the picture. Only her name at the bottom.

——

Eventually all the letters started to come from an apartment in Boston, (only a block or two from a hospital, Spy had noted when he looked up their address. He had not mentioned this to the rest of the team) There were no more pictures, not until Christmas. Scout looked especially thin, almost gaunt, next to a gaggle of older, heartier copies of himself. The youngest of them, though, so Spy realized probably he was the copy. They all had the same smile. And Miss Pauling was practically in his lap, they sat so close. Spy found himself looking for a long time at the way their fingers interlaced, tried to reassure himself about  _her_ smile, but could only imagine her sadness.

The new Scout was nice, if somewhat socially awkward. It started to hit home that he had a tough act to follow. He didn’t talk even half as much, lacked any natural confidence. He was going to be a long time in really making himself fit in. Miss Pauling had not been replaced.

——

The wedding was not even a month later, and in Boston, and of course they were all invited. The Administrator would not deign to attend, but she had allowed the mercs the time off. Probably Miss Pauling had been influential, in the success of that petition.

January was no time for a wedding, but it was beautiful anyway. A twilight wedding, after the early fall of darkness, in a soaring old cathedral, heavy with incense and the silence of decades worth of old prayers. It had a haunting quality, for a wedding service. There was a certain solemnity to it, a certain thing no one talked about. A certain way his mother’s tears weren’t the tears of a mother who’d already married off half her boys.

There was that certain melancholy in Miss Pauling’s eyes, as she asked Spy to help adjust the train of her dress. He did so, genuinely proud of her, and how brave and lovely she was. Of course she was radiant. She was young and beautiful and dark and sad, and she asked Heavy to walk her down the aisle.

Scout just looked terrible, thinner than ever next to Heavy, who hugged him instead of shaking his hand, when Miss Pauling left his arm. Spy couldn’t help but watch Scout’s hands as he lifted her veil, the way they’d gotten bony, and trembled, how the knuckles seemed raw. The way the pair of them paused and leaned into each other and the quiet exchange of words between them, before they approached the altar and made it permanent. She didn’t take his name.

Spy danced with her, briefly, at the reception. After the toasts and the speeches and the cake. After her first slow dance with her better man. She was still terrible at waltzing. Spy made a careless remark, what a modern woman, not taking her husband’s name. Mrs. Pauling had sighed, leaned her head against his shoulder, and said it was only because her husband had begged her not to.

He would find out later that when the pair of them left the ballroom, showered in confetti and joy, the limousine that picked them up had gone on, straight to the hospital.

Later still he would find out they had honeymooned at a hospice.

——

April was no kind of time for a funeral.

She looked, tragically, better in black than she had in white. Spy had hoped, on her wedding day, that she had been dishonest in wearing white. It would have been imprudent to ask, but it would have been a shame for the boy to have died a virgin. Spy wondered, of himself, whether it was worth the cost of having made a beautiful girl into a widow.

All her lovely darkness, etched in grief against a spring sky. After everyone had left, after all the tears and condolences, the way she was swallowed up in the embraces of everyone who came to hold her. It had only made her seem smaller and sadder, and Spy had held back, remaining to watch, her insistence on this final solitude. She stayed to watch the gravekeeper, watch the earth filled into the freshly carved void in her heart. Miss Pauling had been burying bodies since he’d known her. It was only understandable that she have standards.

Spy approached her, only after the gravekeeper had left, after she had shaken his hand and thanked him, after she had sat herself down in the damp grass, next to the stone bearing the name she hadn’t taken. He lowered himself to sit beside her, then cleared his throat. He had nothing to say. There was a reception, to follow the funeral. A car from the funeral home waited, politely distant, to take her to the rented hall where it was being held. Spy could imagine it. He hoped, with the help of his comrades in their dark suits (even the new Scout, shy and nervous and not sure he’d be welcome) that it would be a gathering with fond memories and laughter.

Miss (Mrs? Would she be Mrs Pauling now?) Pauling broke her silence. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go and have to listen to more apologies from people, because there’s no way in the world they’re going to miss him as much as me.”

“That is imminently fair. But it is cold here,  _cher petite_ , and damp, and lonely. He will be gone wherever you are,  _ma mie_  and he won’t ever leave you. If you would permit me your company, we could go somewhere warm and crowded, where no one will even be able to imagine how much you miss him. They will only see a sad, lovely girl, and hope that one day she will be happy again.”

She didn’t only nod, but smiled, and accepted the hand he offered.


End file.
